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In Ike’s Gamble, Michael Doran promotes the early Cold War propaganda of a post-colonial neocon variety. It’s the rhetoric of the US being weak in foreign relations and so we need to take a tougher war hawk stance, presumably involving bombing and invading more countries along with strengthening alliances with authoritarian regimes by giving them greater funding, training, and military equipment.

The specific allegation is that Eisenhower back then, like Obama today, isn’t giving enough support to Israel. I find that strange that the elite are still trying to maintain such an old narrative, even as that narrative has long ago been disproven. There is probably no country in the world we give greater support to, especially in terms of how small the country is. Per capita, Israeli citizens probably get more US funding than do US citizens.

Doran paints Ike as having been naive about the Middle East. But the fact is that with his knowledge the CIA began a series of covert operations, including the assisting of the 1953 coup of the democratically-elected leader of Iran. Rather than naive, that was an extremely cynical maneuver. And importantly, it was a cynical maneuver taken immediately at the beginning of his presidency. He came into power like a man with a mission and wasted no time trying to geopolitically rearrange the world.

Ike was an old general and had been involved in the actions and consequences of geopolitics for his entire career, which is why he intimately understood the military-industrial complex. He was the opposite of naive, although he did like to put on the persona of an old doddering man so that people would underestimate him. He played his cards close to his chest. That is why he preferred covert operations rather than war. He had seen too much war in his life and he wanted to avoid further war. That was based in a grim realism about military conflict.

Ike’s diary of that time was declassified in 2009-2010. In it, he admitted to knowing about the CIA-backed coup in Iran. A few years later in 2013, the US government declassified documents showing the CIA orchestrated the coup. Yet in 2016, Doran can put out a book that is old school propaganda, entirely omitting any references to this info. I did a search in his book and he only briefly mentions the Iran coup, in relation to someone having been a veteran of the CIA covert operation, but he just passes over it as if it otherwise had no significance. Meanwhile, in reviews and interviews, the corporate media takes Doran’s propaganda at face value.

When will the Cold War end? Instead of ending, it feels like we’re right in the middle of it again.

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Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II
by Lloyd Gardner

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
by Tim Weiner

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
by Stephen Kinzer

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer

All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
by Stephen Kinzer

The U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference
by William A. Dorman & Mansour Farhang